In the aftermath of CES, though, one question looms: What exactly do Amazon and Google get out of winning this battle?

Numbers Galore

Both Amazon and Google used CES to state the case for their leadership of voice (Apple, Microsoft, and Samsung, while certainly players, are not the leaders in voice although Apple is a strong challenger). Google announced that Google Assistant is on one billion devices, up from 500 million in May 2018 (a figure boosted by the sale of Android phones that contain Google Assistant by default). Amazon disclosed that it has sold more than 100 million devices that rely on its Alexa virtual assistant. In addition, the number of people who use Alexa every day — and who own more than one Amazon Echo smart speaker — doubled in 2018.

Meanwhile, during CES, more telling numbers were disclosed. According to research conducted by Edison Research and NPR, 53 million adults in the United States (or two out of 10 Americans) own at least one voice-activated smart speaker. The number of smart speakers in homes has increased 78 percent year over year. And on January 8, Accenture reported that half of online consumers globally use digital voice assistants, up from 42 percent one year ago.

These figures don’t mean that people are actually using their voices to buy things from businesses. In fact, most people use voice assistants to perform everyday tasks such as listening to music and getting weather information. But the usage data is important nevertheless. It shows that even if we’re not exactly living in a voice-first world, we’re getting there – and doing so quickly considering that the Amazon Echo didn’t exist until 2014, and Google Home just two years later. In addition, by 2016, 20 percent of all Google mobile queries were voice searches.

The rise of voice also helps explains why so many companies continue to launch products fueled by voice at CES, and 2019 was no exception.

Gadgets and Software Integrations

CES unleashed a dizzying array of products powered by voice, usually through Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa. These products typically focus on making it easier for people to use their voices to live in their homes and navigate their cars. For instance:

In the Home

Lenovo announced an alarm clock powered by Google Assistant. KitchenAid and GE rolled out smart displays that rely on Google Assistant to help you get recipes, watch videos, and do anything else to keep you occupied and entertained in the kitchen. Currant’s new smart wall outlet, which can be controlled by Alexa and Google Assistant, monitors energy usage and suggests which products to automatically turn off to conserve power. The Dalkin smart thermostat works with Alexa and Google Assistant to control the climate in your home.

You can learn more about major product announcements here and here. (For those of you keeping score, in November 2018, Recode reported that Google Assistant works with 10,000 smart home devices versus 20,000 for Alexa.) But the most intriguing products, such as the Currant smart wall outlet, use artificial intelligence to not only act on your voice commands but also give you information and manage your home without your intervention.

On the Go

Both Amazon and Google showed that Alexa and Google Assistant are powering our lives on the go, too. Google formally integrated Google Maps with Google Assistant, which is important because of Google Maps’s popularity for mobile wayfinding. As Mashable noted, “Google envisions users asking it for directions home, or to nearby restaurants and saved locations. You can ask the assistant to search for places along your route (like gas stations) or add a stop — all things that used to require some button pushing.”

Amazon announced a stronger push into voice-powered automobiles. CES was barely under way when Amazon and Telenav, a provider of connected car and location-based services, announced a relationship that makes it possible for drivers to use the Telenav Alexa-powered navigation system to do the same kinds of functional tasks that they can do with Google Maps. And then Amazon formally launched Amazon Echo smart speaker for the car. Google announced a similar product through a relationship with Anker’s Roav automotive accessory, which is essentially a Google Home for the car.

These announcements continued a battle for on-the-go voice experiences that has been going on for some with Google, Apple, and Amazon all rapidly launching products and software designed to be the de facto infotainment systems for different car manufacturers. The irony is that major auto makers have been announcing dips in sales for 2018. But overall, automotive has been a strong industry over the past several years. And now cars are getting smarter.

What Do They Want?

No wonder so many “Google versus Amazon” stories have proliferated throughout January. But the more important question than who “won” CES is what do Amazon and Google get out of all these voice-powered products? The answer is simple:

The company that owns the ecosystem monetizes the voice-first world.

Owning the ecosystem yields practical benefits, such as revenue gained from the sale of smart speakers. Amazon commands a strong leadership of smart speakers, but Google is catching up. As of 2019, Amazon is capturing 63.3 percent of the smart speaker market, with Google Home accounting for 31 percent. The numbers matter for another reason besides revenue: smart speakers connect people with other smart devices, thus acting as a gateway for product integrations. As Accenture noted in its survey of global smart assistant users, “[n]inety-three percent of consumers globally expect their home device purchases, such as smart TVs or computers, to be based on ease of integration with their standalone smart speaker.”

Google’s Motivation

For Google, being the backbone of voice protects the company’s online advertising business, which accounts for more than 70 percent of Google’s revenue. Google needs to keep giving people reasons to keep using products such as the Google search engine, Google Maps, and the Google Chrome web browser. As people stay on Google, Google can continue to deliver audiences to advertisers and learn from audience behavior. As people use voice, Google can keep them on Google by incorporating voice into its products, launching new products such as Google Home, and making Google Assistant part of other companies’ products, which is the alarm clocks, thermostats, and cars using Google Assistant come into play.

As Amazon creates its own advertising business, it, too, needs to show potential advertisers that it can deliver an audience to them – in the home and on the go, whether they use their voices or text to get what they need. In 2018, it was reported that Amazon was in talks with advertising giants such as Procter & Gamble to permit them to advertise on Amazon Echo speakers. Amazon has denied that it’s going to permit advertising through Alexa. But even if Amazon does not offer ads, per se, it can use voice to mine valuable data about its customers that would be useful to its advertisers, such as Google can.

Amazon is already working with businesses to monetize skills. Through premium content known as in-skill products that reside within Alexa skills, businesses can sell premium content such as in-game currency. For example, Stoked Skill offers free games such as Escape the Room and Escape the Airplane. The games are set up as Alexa skills. Players use Alexa skills to find clues that will help them escape spaces such as jell cells and cars. Customers can pay for optional “hint” packs (in in-skill product) that make it easier for them to escape.

I could see Amazon also offering branded content and products to Prime customers who use Echo, such as discounts at local restaurants unlocked exclusively through Amazon Echo Auto. Doing so would monetize voice without more intrusive advertising that lack any useful offers.

Finally, Amazon has other plans to monetize voice in the enterprise, such as Alexa for Business to help enterprises use Alexa to improve workforce productivity. As these examples show, companies are using Alexa for Business to book conference rooms, manage the connection status of shared devices, and other workplace tasks. But Amazon has competition in the enterprise most notably from Apple and Microsoft.

What Business Should Do

Brands have a clear mandate: prepare for a voice-first world, and one where Amazon and Google call the shots for now. When consumers start really buying products and services via voice assistants, brands will need to play ball with the companies that control the voice ecosystem. Here is how Recode envisions one way that world will play out:

How it works now: If you ask Amazon’s Alexa or Google Assistant to buy, say, shampoo, they’ll surface what they think you’ll want. Alexa uses several criteria to suggest a purchase option: Your order history, whether a product is eligible for free Prime shipping and whether the product has the “Amazon’s Choice” seal of approval — “highly rated, well-priced products available to ship immediately.”

Google picks products from merchants thatare most relevant to the query. It also considers purchase history and information about user preferences, as well as an item’s availability and proximity.

Both companies say there is no favoring of specific retailers — or their own products.

Brands also can’t pay for visibility — yet. For now, Amazon and Google are trying to build trust among new — few — voice buyers by making their search results as relevant as possible. It doesn’t, however, take much imagination to see a future in which Amazon or Google merchants could pay to have their products suggested by their smart assistants — like sponsored ads that crowd their websites — as a way to generate more ad dollars.

Today, businesses are participating by creating sometimes clever and inventive voice-based brand building experiences, such as HBO’s voice-activated Westworld game, in which people use Alexa to explore the mythical Westworld. Other businesses have created their own branded Alexa skills. With Tide’s Stain Remover skill, you can get stain removal instructions shared with you through Alexa. Campbell’s offers recipes through Campbell’s Kitchen. Presumably, these businesses could offer in-skill products if they wanted to, an example being HBO offering a premium-tier Westworld game for purchase. And businesses are optimizing their content to be found through voice search.

Amazon and Google are not the only companies doing the heavy lifting, but they are leading the way to a voice-first world. Smart companies are going with them.

David Bowie visited my home on his birthday this week. He sang “Life on Mars” in my dining room. He performed a mime on my front porch. He showed me the handwritten lyrics to “Ashes to Ashes” while I was sitting on my sofa. All thanks to a mind-blowing augmented reality app, David Bowie Is.

The app, based on the groundbreaking David Bowie Is museum exhibition, was released on iOS and Android platforms January 8 on what would have been the Thin White Duke’s 72nd birthday.

I had visited the David Bowie Is exhibit at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art in 2014. At the time, I was moved to tears by the brilliance of his music, his visual genius, and his passion for creating art. When I downloaded the app years later on a wind-swept January day, I wondered whether re-creating bits and pieces of the exhibit with a small iPhone screen might tarnish the memory.

I need not have worried.

When you open the app, you explore 25 rooms and 400 objects from his life, including hand-written notes for songs, costumes rendered in 3D, images of stage sets, and video. Gary Oldman (sounding a bit like Bowie himself) narrates different scenes, such as how the BBC actually used Bowie’s “Space Oddity” in its coverage of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

But this app is not just a progression of flat images and video dancing in your smart phone. When you point your smart phone at a flat surface, the space in front of you is transformed while David Bowie’s songs fill your ears through spatial audio. My dining room table dissolved into stars as I played “Space Oddity” and then became a floating set piece for Bowie’s Diamond Dogs tour, obliterating the very real pile of unpaid bills and junk mail that cluttered the surface. My dining room became bathed in a mint green light as Bowie sang “Life on Mars.”

The David Bowie Is app also takes you on a journey through David Bowie’s creative process. How he collaborated with fashion designers, artists, and filmmakers. How he synthesized everything he saw, heard, read, and lived into his own vision. You learn how living in the disjointed but kinetic world of 1970s Berlin fueled the sense of experimentation and adventure on the so-called Berlin trilogy, Low, “Heroes,” and Lodger. How his rough drawing for the album cover of Diamond Dogs became a shocking and memorable image through his collaboration with artist Guy Peellaert. And you learn much, much more as you lose yourself in his world.

The app does not replace the experience of going to the museum and sharing David Bowie’s world with the community of museum goers. It’s more like a technology-rich update to the experience of listening to David Bowie’s record albums. I use the term record album deliberately. Actually listening to a record album all the way through demands your attention, especially if you listen to a vinyl record, which entails unwrapping an album from its sleeve, teeing it up on a turntable, and turning it over midway through. When you listen to a record, you don’t make “Fame” and “The Man Who Sold the World” into digital background fodder for your morning exercise routine.

David Bowie Is functions like that vinyl record. You must give the app your full attention to appreciate it. Here is augmented reality with a soul.

Record albums refuse to die even though sales are no longer what they used to be. Musicians continue to rely on long-form collections of songs to tell personal stories, and album cover art remains a crucial aspect of the storytelling. In 2018 (as I’ve done for many years), I explored music released during the year to identify the most memorable album cover art. I looked for album covers that:

Capture your attention.

Express the essence of the artist.

Say something about the musical content of the album itself.

This year, I was struck by the number of album covers that expressed what it means for an artist to be the Other, especially to be LGBTQ. The year witnessed a bumper crop of works created by LGBTQ musicians, perhaps most notably by Janelle Monáe, whose acclaimed Dirty Computer created a public forum for Monáe to announce her pansexuality. The album cover art of LGBTQ artists was as intensely personal as their music. Here are three examples:

Blood Orange, Negro Swan

Negro Swan, the fourth album from Blood Orange, the moniker for musician Devonté Hynes, expresses the complicated journey of the black LGBTQ experience. Blood Orange recently said that Negro Swan is “an exploration into my own and many types of black depression, an honest look at the corners of black existence, and the ongoing anxieties of queer/people of color. A reach back into childhood and modern traumas, and the things we do to get through it all.” The album’s title underscores race-based Otherness by using wordplay to subvert a term, black swan, meant to signify a rare thing of beauty. Songs such as “Charcoal Baby” articulate the artist’s vision, with lyrics such as:

No one wants to be the Negro Swan

No one wants to be the odd one out at times

Can you break sometimes?

In “Dagenham Dream,” Blood Orange recalls how he stopped wearing makeup and tried to start conforming after getting beat up for being an Other, much to the sadness of one of his school teachers:

And my eyebrow acted like the boys in town

Then my teacher told me that this, made her sad

Had to act just like the others to get around

But Blood Orange also offers hope that he will embrace his Otherness, as in the song “Smoke,” in which he sings,

Choosing what you wear and getting this far

Waiting for the smoke to clear . . .

The Sun comes in, my heart fulfills within

Indeed, Blood Orange has also said of Negro Swan, “The underlying thread through each piece on the album is the idea of hope, and the lights we can try to turn on within ourselves with a hopefully positive outcome of helping others out of their darkness.”

The album cover personifies Negro Swan through the image of Kai the Black Angel, who appears sitting on a car’s front passenger window frame with a white do-rag on his head and angel’s wings sprouting from his back. His head rests on his arms. His facial expression looks ambiguous. Is he calmly resting? Resigned? Sad? It’s hard to tell because his face is partially obscured by his arms.

In the video for one of the album’s songs, “Jewelry,” Kai the Black Angel appears briefly sitting on the car’s window frame. His facial expression again exudes a sense of calm. He also looks hopeful for the touch or embrace of the viewer. He reaches out toward the camera with a gentle wave, and as the car moves away from view, he continues to gaze back at the viewer, as if to make the brief moment of communion last as long as possible. For a few seconds, Kai the Black Angel shares the light that Blood talks and sings about on Negro Swan.

Janelle Monáe, Dirty Computer

On Dirty Computer, Janelle Monáe celebrates LGBTQ sexuality while confronting judgments that are inevitably cast upon the Other. On the song “Crazy, Classic Life,” she sings with confidence and defiance,

Young, Black, wild and free

Naked in a limousine . . .

I just wanna party hard

Sex in the swimming pool . . .

I’m not America’s nightmare

I’m the American dream

Just let me live my life

Elsewhere, she explores what it means to live as a sexual being on her own terms, as in the song “Take a Byte”:

I’m not the kind of girl you take home to your mama now . . .

Maybe it’s lust, maybe it’s love, maybe it never ends

Ooh, say your goodbyes (say ’em now)

Play in my hair and nibble there all on my mocha skin

Yeah, just take a byte

In “Pynk,” she speaks bluntly and frankly about a sexual experience whose meaning is even more clear in the song’s video:

Pink like the inside of your . . . babyPink behind all of the doors, crazyPink like the tongue that goes down, maybePink like the paradise foundPink when you’re blushing inside, babyPink is the truth you can’t hide, maybe

But the album cover dials down the overt sexuality and instead presents the artist in another light. Her eyes are nearly closed, and her face is covered with a beaded veil. Why? One explanation I’ve read makes perfect sense: she’s expressing an homage to her mentor Prince:

The connection is obvious in the video “Make Me Feel,” which sounds and looks like a Prince video. In it, Janelle Monáe explores her own lust for female bodies. And indeed she adorns the beaded veil in the video as she does on the album cover.

But the video also appears in a completely different context, as part of a 48-minute movie, Dirty Computer – An Emotion Picture, that debuted in April along with the album’s release. The movie depicts a world in which people living lives of individual freedom are rounded up and have their memories erased. A voice-over explains, “You were dirty if you looked different. You were dirty if you refused to live the way they dictated. You were dirty if you showed any form of opposition at all. And if you were dirty, it was only a matter of time . . .”

Monáe portrays Jane 57821, whose life of unfettered sexual joy makes her an outlaw and a target for the authorities. Her life is told through sequences taken from her standalone videos, including “Move Me,” which recontextualizes Monáe as Jane 57821 wearing the jeweled veil. In the context of Dirty Computer– An Emotion Picture, her joyous pansexual life puts her at risk for being persecuted and subjected to a horrible fate. Now we see the cover in a new light: her sexual identity, which is a source of pride and joy, also creates a personal risk, as it does for the Other.

Dirty Computer is a near-future story about a citizen who finds love and danger in a totalitarian society. She’s an outlaw because she’s being herself . . . Overall, I wanted to reflect what’s happening in the streets right now, and what might happen tomorrow if we don’t band together and fight for love.

Jane 57821 is alive today, fighting for her own identity in the United States. Jane 57821 is Janelle Monaé.

Ah Mer Ah Su, Star

Star is an expression of self-love and healing from the perspective of a transgender artist, Amerasu Star, who performs as Ah Mer Ah Su. In an interview with PAPER, she says the album reflects her learning self-compassion and acceptance after surviving an abusive relationship with a man and being diagnosed as bipolar type two. On the song “Heartbreaker,” she not only transcends a relationship but turns the tables on a man who is hurting her:

I once tried to put you under my spell

Then realized I’d failed and I was overwhelmed

I’ll run into the arms of others

To try to forget you

And it hurts, it hurts, it hurts

But being a heartbreaker is easier than being broke

Here is how she describes the song meaning to PAPER:

I think I’ve had my heart broken too many times by men, to the point where I’ve become someone who ghosts people or runs away. It’s my way of turning the tables, of running away from feeling too good, because I want to break your heart. I’m tired of being heartbroken; it has happened too many times. As a transfemme, it happens so much that we are with shitty dudes who don’t care about us at all really. They view us as sexual objects and I’ve been devastated by that, so I wanted to totally change the narrative.

The overwhelming vibe on the album is about claiming your own narrative by reaching within. On “Need You, Need Me,” she defiantly looks forward after breaking free from an abusive relationship. On “Be Free,” she asks her audience, “Are you growing?/Are you showing any sign of change?” The soaring “Perfect” exhorts the listener to reject self-loathing, stop trying to chase for perfection and instead embrace something more positive and healthy:

How many days have I spent feeling shame?Where I said I was to blame for my circumstance?What would you do?If you couldn’t be you? . . .

PerfectI’ll never be perfectThe world isn’t perfect and neither are you

The album cover art, taken from the video for “Perfect,” expresses the album’s themes. The vibrant colors suggest the star that shines within us. Ah Mer Ah Su holds herself tenderly with her eyes closed, as if lost in a moment of self-love. The somewhat grainy and blurred image seems to capture the narrative of “Perfect” – the reality that there is no such thing as perfection, and what matters is accepting and celebrating ourselves as we are. Hers is a universal message, too. As she told Billboard,

[M]y album isn’t just for transgender black people. I want everyone to listen to this album and listen to a trans woman sing about her experience. I want everyone who listens to understand what it’s like to be me and realize how precious and delicate — yet strong and empowering — my story is. I want my sisters to listen to this album and know that they are worthy, beautiful, and deserving of love.

Ah Mer Ah Su, like Blood Orange and Janelle Monáe, has connected with listeners in emotionally powerful ways. Fortunately we have her music and artistic expression of her songs to deepen that connection.

For more examples of memorable LGBTQ album cover art, check out my SlideShare. What album cover art from 2018 resonates with you?

Apple took a major step forward to influence the future of healthcare with the release of an ECG app and irregular heart rhythm notification. With the Apple Watch Series 4, users can take an ECG similar to a single-lead reading. And owners of Apple Watch Series 1 or later (with watch OS 5.1.2) can get notified if an irregular heart rhythm such as atrial fibrillation (AFib) is identified (per the American Heart Association, AFib is present in about one in five strokes.) The new functionality has already been credited with saving one man’s life. The release of the app also comes with a challenge: earning credibility with physicians, who have voiced concerns about people misreading the app’s data. But Apple is up for the challenge — and will succeed. That’s because for years, Apple has built partnerships across the healthcare ecosystem. Those partnerships have provided a proving ground for Apple’s healthcare apps and generated a reservoir of goodwill for one of the world’s most valuable brands.

A Healthcare Strategy

The ECG app, announced at Apple’s September 12 Special Event, support Apple’s strategy to improve healthcare by being the data backbone for patient care. That strategy has three key elements:

Software for patients and providers to monitor and share data, which is where apps come into play.

Hardware: the Apple Watch and iPhone to create an ever-present device platform.

Relationships with healthcare providers such as hospital networks to monitor and share wellness data.

Apple’s penetration of healthcare supports its growth in both wearables and services, two categories that, while small, are contributing more to Apple’s revenue growth based on its fourth-quarter earnings results announced November 1. But with healthcare, CEO Tim Cook has loftier aspirations than generating more revenue. As he told TIME recently, “Apple’s largest contribution to mankind will be in improving people’s health and well-being.”

Reaction from Physicians

But to improve health and well-being, Apple needs to have physicians on board. Some have been publicly critical of the ECG app, while others have been supportive. The announcement of heart monitoring features during Apple’s September Special Event almost immediately triggered concerns from physicians who worried that patients would misdiagnose themselves. But the announcement also came with support from the medical community. For example, Christopher Worsham, a critical care physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Anupam B. Jena, an internist at Massachusetts General Hospital, wrote in Harvard Business Review, “ . . . doctors shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss the new feature, particularly as it appears amidst growing consumer enthusiasm for wearable devices that measure health behaviors. The Apple Watch has the potential to provide valuable data that benefits the entire health care community.”

Now that the ECG app is live, Apple has experienced both criticism and good PR. On the one hand, an Orange Country cardiologist, Dr. Brian Kolski, has complained about numerous patients contacting him because they thought their Apple Watches were reporting heart problems when in fact nothing was wrong. Dr. Kolski discussed a patient who contacted him in the middle of the night, panicking about a heart reading he’d seen on his Apple Watch.

“He texted me the strip, and it was completely normal,” Dr. Kolski told The Orange County Register. “This was a healthy 45-year-old man who was playing around on his watch and went into a major panic.”

On the other hand, the new features are generating positive news coverage for Apple. TechCrunch and ABC News have already reported the case of Ed Dentel, whose physician told him that the new app likely saved his life by notifying him of an abnormal heart rate. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent, tested the ECG app and reported it to be “remarkably easy” although he cautioned users to use the app with care.

“The app may also increase visits to the doctor from newly concerned patients,” he wrote. “Still, there has been considerable enthusiasm from the medical community as a whole . . . There is no doubt Apple is counting on doctors to use the data collected by the Apple Watch. The company has made it easy to upload your ECG, along with a description of your symptoms, to your personal doctor directly from the app to facilitate that communication. It’s all part of their big bet on making an impact in health care.”

Strong Relationships in Place

The PR is important, and so is the data that Apple cranks out to substantiate the value and accuracy of the ECG app. But Apple already has something else going for it: a demonstrated ability to forge partnerships with the medical community. The launch of the ECG app is just the latest in a long list of Apple’s accomplishments on the road to become a healthcare player — and those successes have come through partnerships with physicians that I discussed in my recent white paper, Dr. Apple Will See You Now. For example:

In 2014 Apple, launched HealthKit to give Apple users a central repository to track health and fitness data on their Apple devices. In February 2015, Ochsner Health System in New Orleans launched its “Hypertension Digital Medicine Program,” which relies on HealthKit to help patients measure and share with the provider their own blood pressure and heart rates. Oschner adjusts (in real-time, if needed) patients’ medications and lifestyle counseling based on the findings.

In 2015, Apple released ResearchKit, an open source software framework designed for medical and health research, intended to help doctors and scientists gather data more frequently and more accurately from participants using iPhone apps. The University of Rochester has used ResearchKit to build an app for the largest Parkinson’s study in history. According to Apple, “the app helps researchers better understand Parkinson’s disease by using the gyroscope and other iPhone features to measure dexterity, balance, gait, and memory.”

In January 2018, Apple announced that its Health app will make it possible for users to see their medical records right on their iPhones, which would thus empower potentially 90 million Americans who own iPhones. When Apple launched the capability, the company came out of the gate with 39 hospital networks participating. (Apple keeps a running list of participating hospital networks on its website.)

Apple has published more examples of successful physician collaboration. For instance, at Johns Hopkins, physicians provide epilepsy patients with Apple Watches to track their seizures, possible triggers, medications, and side effects. Thanks to a special app developed by Johns Hopkins, the EpiWatch, patients have access to their personal information through a dashboard that also shares data with providers if the patient wants to do so. Patients can also send a message to family members and providers to let them know when the patient is tracking a seizure. Johns Hopkins is collecting this data to eventually understand how to predict seizures before they happen.

Hiring Physicians

Reportedly, Apple’s journey to healthcare prominence also means hiring approximately 50 physicians. CNBC cited the example of hiring hired an orthopedic surgeon, Sharat Kusuma, who leads a team working with medical device maker Zimmer Biomet “to study whether Apple technology can help patients recover from knee and hip replacement surgeries.” In a December 12 article, Christina Farr of CNBC wrote, “The hires could help Apple win over doctors — potentially its harshest critics — as it seeks to develop and integrate health technologies into the Apple Watch, iPad and iPhone.” She added,

Doctors can also help Apple guide the medical community on how to use Apple’s new health technologies and to deflect criticism. As an example, when Apple announced its electrocardiogram sensor to track heart rhythm irregularities, the company put up a website to help answer physicians’ questions. That’s important because there’s a very high bar to win approval among doctors who fear liability and are already overburdened by technology.

And here is where Apple’s established relationships with medical networks will pay off. Apple is not trying to build relationships and credibility from scratch. Apple already possesses goodwill by proving itself through efforts that precede the ECG app (such as those cited above). And Apple’s other ace in the hole is usage among physicians: 75 percent of doctors in the United States own some form of Apple device, according to a study by Manhattan Research.

We all know Steve Jobs was the super power who made Apple synonymous with changing the world. But Tim Cook is building a legacy, too, around healthcare. That’s because Apple is improving healthcare through partnerships, not disruption.

I recently stepped inside the paintings of Norman Rockwell through virtual reality. After viewing Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms paintings at The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan, I experienced them in an immersive way that only VR can provide. Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms: A Virtual Reality Experience demonstrates how VR can educate by complementing, not replacing, the physical world — but only if VR offers compelling content.

About the Four Freedoms

In 1943, Norman Rockwell painted the Four Freedoms series — Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear – to visualize the four freedoms, or essential human rights, espoused by Franklin Roosevelt in a 1941 State of the Union address. Upon their publication in The Saturday Evening Post, Rockwell’s Four Freedoms became immensely popular. They expressed a nostalgic, reassuring image of America at a time when World War II had made the world seem darker. The Four Freedoms ensured Norman Rockwell’s fame as an artist whose work expressed American ideals in a way that resonated with a mass audience.

Many decades later, the Four Freedoms are on display in a traveling exhibit that began at the New York Historical Society on May 25 and will continue until 2020. The Henry Ford has hosted the second leg of the tour since October 13 and will do so until January 13. Seeing these paintings in person is like viewing the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence at the National Archives. They don’t need virtual reality to convey their power. But as I discovered, VR helped me appreciate the artist and his times.

Rockwell Up Close

I came across a VR viewing area near the end of the tour, after I’d spent a Sunday afternoon studying Rockwell’s works up close, including Freedom from Want, which has become perhaps the most cherished if satirized vision of American bounty.

As with just about every famous art I’ve seen reproduced somewhere, Rockwell’s paintings are more vivid when you see them in person. By contrast, the VR viewing area consisted of a spartan arrangement of chairs and headsets. You always know when you’ve entered the VR zone: no matter what the context, you’re greeted by a clusters of disconnected people gazing into headsets unaware of the real world around them. But I’d already gotten what I came for. I was game for spending some time in the VR zone. What did I have to lose? After I was given a brief explanation of how the VR experience works, I strapped on a headset and let my mind wander.

Intuitive VR

The experience was as intuitive as VR should be. From a virtual viewing room, I could step inside different Four Freedoms paintings to explore a re-creation of the settings suggested by Rockwell’s art. For example, Freedom from Fear depicts a mother and father tucking their children in bed for a night of peaceful, carefree sleep. The father holds a newspaper with a headline that suggests the London Blitz bombing occurring across the Atlantic.

Through VR, I explored the room in more detail as well as the family’s home as it might have looked in 1943. I came across a silver-colored penny on a dresser. When I clicked on the penny, words appeared onscreen to explain that the 1943 silver-colored penny was a wartime coin issue made of steel and coated with zinc. It was necessary to create pennies from steel because copper was needed to make shell casings and munitions. Throughout the house, I found many other belongings from the era, including a civilian air spotter guide, blackout curtains, comic books, and trading cards.

VR expanded my understanding of wartime in the United States by inviting me into Rockwell’s time rather than separating me from it with a panel. Rockwell’s paintings engaged and taught me more about Rockwell and his vision. VR taught me more about Rockwell’s world.

VR and AR Take Hold in Museums

Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms: A Virtual Reality Experience constitutes a laid-back experience as far as VR goes. Touring the paintings requires not much physical effort beyond tilting your head to navigate. This experience is designed to ease you into VR from a sitting position. Created by Academy of Art University, San Francisco, and the Norman Rockwell Museum, Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms is one of many ways museums are using VR and augmented reality (AR) to become more immersive. For example:

The Franklin Institute transports people into space, the ocean, and the human body with Oculus Rift and HTC Vive VR headsets.

“David Bowie Is,” the critically acclaimed David Bowie exhibition, will become an AR app following a multi-year run at museums ranging from V&A Museum in London to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.

The Kremer Museum, launched in 2017, features more than 70 17th Century Dutch and Flemish Old Master paintings exclusively through VR. It is believed to be the only museum to exist entirely within VR.

And many, many more examples abound, as museums employ technology to remain relevant with audiences whose expectations are set by immersive games, music, and movies using multiple devices and screens.

Why the Four Freedoms VR Experience Succeeds

In this context, Four Freedoms: A Virtual Reality Experience succeeds. Here’s why:

Most importantly: the content is effective. The idea of using VR to visit the settings suggested by the painting is inspired, and the execution delivers with interesting examples such as the steel penny.

VR complements the in-person experience. Placing the VR stations at the end of the tour means that VR does not compete with the landmark paintings. You first get the measure of Rockwell’s work before experiencing the paintings from a fresh perspective with VR.

The low-key experience suits the topic. You explore the paintings at a leisurely pace, befitting the idyllic setting of Rockwell’s paintings. This is no Lone Echo or Star Trek: Bridge Crew, nor should it be. Norman Rockwell’s work evokes a simpler, homespun time, like comfort food. His paintings do not lend themselves to an overwhelming sensory experience.

It does not cost extra. I was more likely to strap on a headset and geek out with VR because I didn’t have to pay more. I’d already paid for the entrance to the exhibit when I bought my ticket for The Henry Ford.

The experience also underscores the limitations of VR as a technology for mass consumption. At the end of the exhibit, I walked away, probably never to experience Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms: A Virtual Reality Experience again. VR requires repeated use by consumers to take hold. And with the exception of gaming and entertainment, VR lacks the requisite content to justify the expense of buying the equipment and the time required to delve into VR. Put another way: it’s one thing for museum goers to use VR as part of an experience they were going to pay for, anyway, especially when someone else is providing the equipment. But asking them to make an investment into VR for common use in their homes? That’s a totally different story unless they are into gaming.

But these limitations are only a problem if you expect VR to become a popular everyday consumer experience. VR continues to take hold in industries ranging from education to training (to wit: STRIVR works with businesses such as Walmart to use VR to improve employee performance with training). Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms: A Virtual Reality Experience demonstrates one useful application.

Why are we sometimes moved to tears when famous artists die? I thought of this question while pondering the anniversary of George Harrison’s death today. I did not know George Harrison. I never met him. Yet when I learned of his passing on November 29, 2001, I wept.

Artists wield a ferocious power. Sometimes they shape your identity with their work. Sometimes they penetrate your soul. George Harrison created music that reflected an important part of my identity, especially the songs from his masterpiece All Things Must Pass. “My Sweet Lord,” perhaps Harrison’s best known work as a solo artist, expresses my own spiritual longing over the years. As a boy I sought spiritual comfort amid a traumatic childhood. As an adult I turn to God for wisdom and comfort, always seeking answers and guidance, but finding those things to be elusive more times than I’d like. As Harrison sang:

I really want to see you
Really want to be with you
Really want to see you, Lord
But it takes so long, my Lord

In the song “Hear Me Lord,” Harrison articulates the reasons why I often find spiritual fulfillment to be elusive: because I’m not listening to God. I become lost in the stress and worries of everyday life or my mind becomes cluttered by material things and worldly distractions:

Forgive me lord

Please, those years when I ignored you

Help me lord, please

To rise a little higher

Help me lord, please

To burn out this desire.

And in “All Things Must Pass,” I see myself on my best days, drawing upon my spiritual well to accept change and counseling others to do the same:

Sunrise doesn’t last all morning,
A cloudburst doesn’t last all day.
All things must pass,
All things must pass away.

These songs matter to me because I identify with the spiritual journey Harrison shares in them. But why did George Harrison himself become important to me? Because when someone creates music that moves you so deeply, you want to believe that the artist is worthy of the songs they create. I want to believe that the man who wrote “My Sweet Lord” was a profound spiritual seeker. And if you have never meet the artist personally, it becomes that much easier to create your own narrative about them.

In George Harrison’s case, I can certainly glean some clues about his life from his biographers. I cannot deny he often failed to live up to the noble sentiments expressed in his songs. History tells us he was an unfaithful husband and capable of childish, judgmental behavior. But he never claimed to be perfect. By his own statements and actions he was indeed a flawed seeker. He once said, “Everything else can wait, but the search for God cannot.” His search famously resulted in the Beatles traveling to India to seek enlightenment in 1968, which unlocked a creative lode of songs that made their way on to The White Album. George Harrison attempted to improve himself and the world around him. The fact that he stumbled makes him more relatable and personal.

When I look at George Harrison’s sober face on the cover of All Things Must Pass, I see myself — the part of me that broods, worries, and ponders matters of the spirit. Because I was not present when he was photographed for the album cover decades ago, I am free to construct my own narrative and identify with him, or at least the image of George Harrison as portrayed to me. And here is why the death of an artist you don’t know personally can move you to tears: because you do know them. They’ve opened themselves up to you with their art. You’ve bonded with their words and their music. And you’ve allowed yourself to internalize their art, to identify with it. When an artist you love passes away, they take part of you with them.

On a cold November afternoon, I’ve immersed myself in a bad Frank Sinatra album from 1974, Some Nice Things I’ve Missed. Why would I do that? Because experiencing an artist’s lesser work helps you understand them better, like reading chapters of a revealing biography.

Some Nice Things I’ve Missed gives me a deeper sense of how Sinatra tried to remain relevant during his comeback following a brief retirement in the early 1970s. Sinatra, pushing 60, was recording less and performing more, especially in Las Vegas, where Elvis Presley had entered the final phase of his own career. On Some Nice Things I’ve Missed, Sinatra tried to capitalize on the popularity of several songs that were charting during his retirement. He covered everything from Tony Orlando and Dawn’s “Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Ole Oak Tree” to Jim Croce’s “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown,” both of which were hits in 1973.

Here, Sinatra was attempting to force a sense of contemporary relevance by chasing popular tastes. And he failed miserably. The 10 songs he chose were unsuited for the orchestral treatment given to them by the album’s producer and arranger, Don Costa. And he interpreted the music with indifference, at best. For example, his phrasing on “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” sounded forced and rushed, lacking the warmth and humor of Jim Croce’s original.

The problem was that he allowed desperation to cloud his judgment. Instead of choosing songs that played to his strengths as a vocalist, he used a song’s proven chart position as the litmus test for covering it. As a result, to modern-day reviewers, Sinatra “sounds disinterested in the project, as if he can’t wait to leave the studio,” in the words of reviewer Stephen Thomas Erlewine.

Now let’s go back to 1967, when Sinatra, in his early 50s, was staring down the threat of rock and roll. Although he committed mistakes that he would repeat on Some Nice Things I’ve Missed, he also recorded a masterpiece, Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim, that was unlike anything he’d ever done.

Jobim was a leading composer of the bossa nova style of music that had gained a global following of its own. On Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim, Sinatra discovered a new direction with sensitive, nuanced performances on songs such as, “The Girl from Ipanema” (for which Jobim shared a composing credit). Sinatra sounded cool and relevant, because not only was the genre hip, but he also sounded hip. As biographer James Kaplan wrote in Sinatra: The Chairman, “Sinatra sang with an exquisite tenderness he hadn’t tapped since The Wee Small Hours, 12 years before.”

In fact, Frank Sinatra created a timeless sound that has outlived a lot of rock and roll from that era. I’ll take Sinatra singing “The Girl from Ipanema” and “Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars” over Iron Butterfly’s “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” any day. He didn’t try to compete with rock and roll. Instead, he explored territory that no rock and roller could touch.

Listening to Frank Sinatra at the top of his game is one of life’s great pleasures. But listening to bad Sinatra invites more inquiry into his life, too. Bad Sinatra makes me appreciate the insecurities and struggles of a man who fears being irrelevant as he grows older. If you’ve never felt that insecurity or fear that Sinatra experienced — trust me, my friends, that day will come. On your best days, you will respond with grace. But sometimes you will stumble, as Sinatra did. Listening to Sinatra struggle on an album such as Some Nice Things I’ve Missed makes him more human and relatable.

After treating Black Friday like a cattle round-up for years, Walmart is finally injecting a little humanity into the year’s worst shopping tradition. On November 8, the retailer announced measures intended to make Black Friday shopping just a bit more pleasant:

Walmart is serving four million cups of complimentary coffee (courtesy of Keurig) and a few million free Christmas cookies from the Walmart Bakery.

Walmart will make it easier for shoppers to find top deals in-store via the Walmart app.

Check Out with Me store associates stationed throughout the stores and equipped with mobile check-out devices will make it possible for shoppers to purchase items on the spot, thus avoiding long lines.

Facebook created a stir recently when TechCrunch reported that the world’s largest social network is working on the development of augmented reality (AR) glasses. In 2017, Mark Zuckerberg had suggested that the creation of AR eyewear was on the horizon. In late October Facebook’s head of augmented reality Ficus Kirkpatrick seemingly confirmed the development of AR eyewear in a conversation with TechCrunch’s Josh Constine:

“Yeah! Well of course we’re working on it,” Facebook’s head of augmented reality Ficus Kirkpatrick told me when I asked him at TechCrunch’s AR/VR event in LA if Facebook was building AR glasses. “We are building hardware products. We’re going forward on this . . . We want to see those glasses come into reality, and I think we want to play our part in helping to bring them there.”

But for my money, Facebook’s launch of 3D photos is the far more exciting development.

3D for Real

I used to think 3D was a joke. I cringed at every 3D movie I’d ever seen with the exception of Avatar. Wearing ridiculous glasses to see Captain Jack Sparrow mug and stumble his way through the high seas felt like an extreme form of torture. I never took 3D ViewMaster photos very seriously. And I thought those 3D photo crystals of babies and smiling couples locked in an embrace looked flat-out creepy.

The Google Doodle for October 12, 2018, honors the legacy of Roberto Clemente. Many remember him as a Hall of Fame Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder. But his lasting legacy is his passion for doing good. If you were alive on New Year’s Eve 1972, you didn’t need to be a baseball fan to be moved by the news of his death in a plane crash as he was flying to Nicaragua to help earthquake victims there. Fortunately, Google has kept his memory alive for the digital generation in the best way possible, a Google Doodle.

My Roberto Clemente Story

When I was 12, a friend of my dad’s invited me to spend a week with his family in Puerto Rico. So my mom dropped me off at O’Hare Airport one spring morning, and I flew down to San Juan by myself with in-flight music (mostly tunes culled from the Eagles Greatest Hits) to keep me company.

For a week, I lived in the San Juan area and got a feel for how residents lived as opposed to how tourists experienced the area. Every night, I fell asleep to the sound of kids playing basketball deep into the evening, and during the day, I wandered around the crowded neighborhood watching people live their days. Roberto Clemente’s presence was everywhere. He had been dead for four years at this point, but he was very much alive in Puerto Rico. Not a day went by without someone bringing up his name, perhaps when kids were playing catch in a park, or old men were drinking coffee in a cafe.

What I remember most: he was talked about, but his likeness was not branded on clothing, as if he were more like a god than a rock star. And no one discussed his achievements on the field. Instead, he was remembered for his compassion — the same compassion that inspired him to help earthquake victims in Nicaragua on New Year’s Eve of 1972.